


and you know (we're on each other's team)

by sabrinachill



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, Welters Challenge 2018, burning shit down, people doing stupid things for friends and love, the usual amounts of swearing and drinking, unified assholes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-30
Updated: 2018-04-30
Packaged: 2019-04-30 06:54:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14491284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sabrinachill/pseuds/sabrinachill
Summary: “I don’t know how you talked me into this.”Quentin is grumbling and twitchy, fucking with his hair and frowning at nothing in particular as he paces across the cottage’s living room.Eliot finds it all unbearably adorable.****The one where they’ve regained their memories and defeated the monster who possessed Eliot. Now there’s just one enemy left - the library.The Physical Kids are going to war.





	1. Chapter 1

“I don’t know how you talked me into this.” 

Quentin is grumbling and twitchy, fucking with his hair and frowning at nothing in particular as he paces across the cottage’s living room. 

Eliot finds it all unbearably adorable.

He slides in behind Quentin and hooks his fingers in his belt loop, tugging Quentin’s back flush against his chest. His hand trails down Quentin’s chest until his fingertips dip beneath the waistband of his pants, and Eliot bends to press his face against the side of Quentin’s neck. 

“Probably because the last time we talked about it, I had my hand in here,” he murmurs. 

His fingertips are hot, his blunt nails scratching lightly against Quentin’s abdomen and drifting lower. And his lips are warm and soft against Quentin’s neck, sucking and kissing and licking. 

“And my mouth was right-” he kisses Quentin’s collarbone, “-about-” he sucks at Quentin’s pulse, throbbing furiously against the side of his neck, “-here.” 

Eliot breathes the last word as he catches Quentin’s earlobe between his teeth. He nibbles gently, his voice a rough rumble through his chest, his breath hot against Quentin’s skin.

And Quentin is suddenly finding it very hard to stand. 

“Oh, right. Now I remember.” His voice is breathy and weak, and he has every intention of hauling Eliot straight upstairs to his room-

-until Margo walks in and Eliot slowly pulls away. 

He doesn’t want to; Quentin smells like pine and soap and smoke, like a campfire doused by a summer storm. Eliot wants to bottle it, to bury his nose in the warm patch of skin behind Quentin’s ear and breathe it in until the scent fills all the empty spaces between his synapses, until it becomes a part of him, intoxicates and nearly drowns him. They lost so much time with the stolen memories and that… _thing_  that possessed him… Eliot doesn’t want to waste one more second being anywhere other than in Quentin’s bed. 

But they have more important matters to attend to right now.

Quentin takes a deep breath and sinks onto the couch, pulling a pillow over his lap and thinking about decidedly unsexy things like cold showers and baseball and spoiled milk. Eliot tosses back a shot of tequila.

“You guys are so precious, like little horny toads,” Margo says with a smile, taking a practice swing with a machete through the air.

Quentin just frowns and waits for the blood to return to his brain. 

“Okay, well, I’m still right about this,” he eventually says. “It’s a terrible idea.”

Margo is bent over, strapping throwing knives to her thigh, so her voice is a bit muffled when she answers. “Jesus, Quentin, unclench. It’ll be fine.”

“Sure, because our last heist went so well.”

“We’re not actually stealing anything, so this isn’t technically a heist,” she answers, distractedly, packing a bag with a shitload of magical supplies and weapons and something that looks suspiciously like a flamethrower. 

She tosses a broadsword into the bag and winks at him. “We’re just going to storm the library, burn it to the motherfucking ground, and then use the embers to light our celebratory joints.”

Quentin rakes his hands back through his hair. “First of all, how do you not hear how insane that sounds? And second, the priority is to save Alice and Penny.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. It’s all about rescue and friendship and lots of other noble bullshit, blah blah blah. When do I get to start destroying stuff?”

“Soon,” Kady says, coming in the front door with Julia and Penny 23 trailing behind her. It’s a triangle of epic awkwardness that no one has the time to deal with right now - they seem to be handling it by simply not looking at one another. 

“Our only advantage is surprise - the library hasn’t yet realized that we’ve gotten our memories back, so they won’t be expecting us. Which means we’ve got to do this thing ASAP.”

Kady’s got an enormous map of the library in her hands, and she slaps it down on the table.

“We’ll travel in to the same bathroom we built the mirror bridge into. Then this Penny and I will head to the underworld to get our Penny back - we found a spell that should allow us to travel there - and the rest of you can destroy shit and rescue Alice.”

She jabs her finger at a room in the center, behind the main circulation desk. Kady’s nails are bitten down to the quick and surrounded by jagged, raw cuticles; there’s a nicotine stain between the fingers on her right hand, and she’s shaking a little. It’s been a rough few days for all of them, coming back to their real identities and lives, but she’s having to suffer from detox on top of everything else.

She’s currently running on little more than the wild hope that this crazy plan will somehow, beyond all probability, actually work.

“Harriet walked me through everything before we used the mirror bridge,” she says.  “She told me the contracts are stored back here. We should destroy them all - no one deserves to be a slave, especially for a billion fucking years. The paper itself is the contract’s only escape clause - if the paper no longer exists, everyone will be freed. And, as an added bonus, if there are no librarians left to control the siphon, magic will be free again, too.”

“And we think Alice is probably in one of these rooms back here,” Julia says, indicating a row of unlabeled rooms along one far wall. “I’ll concentrate on getting to those. My power isn’t what it once was, but it gets stronger every day that I remember who I am. If Alice is there, I should be able to sense her.”

“Q and Eliot, you guys work on setting as much shit on fire as possible, and deal with any of the librarians that choose to fight for the library instead of with us. We’re there to free them, but there’s bound to be some that are all Stockholm Syndrome-y.”

“And Margo-“

“-I’m gonna run straight at the Head Bitch in Charge and tear her so many new assholes she’ll have to wear a colostomy bag as a dress.”

Eliot gently clears his throat. “Please make sure we’ve all reached minimum safe splatter distance when that time comes, Bambi.”

They all stare down at the map, memorizing the layout, imagining their parts.

“So we’re just going to waltz into the library and torch as much as possible and hope we don’t die.”

“Basically.”

A thick cloud of silence descends over the group. 

“It’s a terrible plan,” Julia finally says, Quentin nodding in agreement over her shoulder.

“It’s insane,” Margo says. 

“And probably suicidal,” Penny 23 adds.

“We really should get somebody in the group who’s a decent strategist.”

“We have one,” Quentin says. ‘The library’s holding her prisoner.”  

“And this is our only shot at saving her. And Penny. And freeing magic, _and_  getting our lives back,” Kady says.

“Well, shit,” Eliot mutters, lifting his flask from his vest pocket and taking a long drink. “Okay, so we’re agreed, then? We’re doing this?”

Everyone nods with varying degrees of enthusiasm; Penny 23 sighs. “I fucking hate you guys; you suck in every reality. You’re always running off being stupid and getting yourselves all murdered and shit.”

“But you’re still going to help us?” Julia asks.

Penny can’t look at her. “Of course.”

“Okay,” Kady says, a sharper edge to her voice. “Everybody get ready; we leave in ten.” 

* * *

For Eliot, “getting ready” means “consuming alcohol.” 

Copious amounts of it.

“We’re all entirely too sober for anything that’s about to happen,” he says, stepping behind the bar and quickly pouring three bourbons, neat. 

Margo downs hers in a quick series of long, burning swallows, slams the glass down on the bar top, and goes back to stockpiling weaponry. 

Eliot watches her, sipping his drink, before pressing the third glass into Quentin’s hand. Eliot lets his fingers linger on the inside of Quentin’s wrist, playing with the hair tie he keeps there, stroking over the thin skin and heartbeat that’s running faster than it should be. 

“I’m still not happy,” Quentin says. 

“Well, that’s hardly an unfamiliar state of being for you,” Eliot replies, with a smile and caress that softens the words. 

Quentin rolls his eyes.

“Look, Quentin, I know you’re more of a lover than a fighter,” Eliot purrs, running his fingers through Quentin’s hair and tucking it behind his ear. “But it’s going to be okay. Margo's enough of a fighter for all of us.”

“Damn straight,” she says from across the room, sharpening a wicked-looking blade.

“And so am I,” Kady offers, blowing up one of the chairs beside the fireplace with little more than a flick of her wrist. “So stop freaking out.” 

“I liked that chair,” Quentin mutters, sullenly.

Eliot smiles. “We’ll fix it when we get back. Because we are going to make it back, Q. And we’re going to live to be just as old and wrinkled and ugly as we were before.” 

He cups Quentin’s cheek in his hand, thinking about that terrible, scraggly gray beard that Quentin grew in his later years. God, Eliot had hated that thing, the way it tickled at his chin when they’d kissed, the way it hid even more of Quentin’s beautiful face than his hair always had. “The last time we gave our lives for a quest, I think it worked out pretty well.”

Quentin doesn’t smile back. “You think that because you were the lucky one, the one that got to die first. But I know what it’s like to bury you, El. To live without you. And I have no interest in doing it again.”

Eliot straightens his shoulders and takes a serious sip of his drink. “I very much hope that you don’t have to.”

“I’m going to make sure of it.”

Quentin’s jaw clenches and he flexes his hands. There’s something flinty in his expression that wasn’t there before, something determined and sharp and _hard_. 

It makes Eliot nervous, though he can’t say why. 

* * *

Before anyone actually feels ready, they’re gathered back in the cottage’s common room.

Kady cracks her neck and rolls her shoulders. Penny skims his fingers over the spell tattooed on his knuckles.

And Quentin and Eliot just take a few deep breaths and flex their fingers. They don’t have to rehearse the spell - it’s beyond basic, and one they’ve used thousands of times to light countless cigarettes and joints and pipes and bongs…they’re well acquainted with fire magic. 

Margo has changed into head-to-toe designer black. “Battle chic,” she calls it, and has taken it so seriously that she’s traded her stilettos for combat boots (even if they are $600 ones with three-inch chunky heels).

Everyone else just looks more or less like they usually do. 

Eliot smooths his tie beneath his vest, shakes a cigarette out of his pack and pops it between his lips, then fastidiously adjusts his shirt cuffs. He takes Quentin’s hand with a small smile, and Margo wraps her talon-like nails around his other one. Julia holds Quentin’s other hand with an encouraging nod, Penny 23 beside her, Kady on his other side. 

And then it’s just the six of them, standing in a circle in the old cottage, feeling like they’re light years from where they started.

Quentin looks around the room one more time, trying to memorize it in case it’s the last. He wants to know the exact slope of his favorite sagging couch, the constellations of tiny burn marks in the rug from countless dropped cigarettes and spells gone awry. 

This place is his home. He wants to map it meticulously, fold it up, and carry it in his pocket with him, always. 

Julia smiles. “I feel like someone should say something meaningful, or inspirational.”

It’s quiet for a long time, everyone shuffling their weight and trying to come up with something.

“Fuck the motherfucking library,” Kady finally says.

“In its virgin ass,” adds Penny.

“With a monster cock covered in cayenne pepper,” Eliot says, the unlit cigarette bobbing between his lips. 

“And no lube,” Margo hisses. 

Quentin nods. “Okay then. Let’s do this thing.”

Penny 23 travels them out.


	2. Chapter 2

Quentin always loved libraries. 

They were quiet, peaceful places devoted to knowledge and wonder, where community and solitude existed side-by-side. 

But it’s that love of libraries that only makes him hate this one more. It perverts everything that should make them great, holding knowledge hostage by being closed off and elitist. He can smell it in the stifling, musty air, see it in the washed out colors of harsh fluorescent lights and the defeated slump of indentured librarian servitude. 

It galvanizes him; for the first time, he feels ready for this battle. This place has to burn.

Penny 23 drops them off by the bathroom sinks with a simple, “Don’t fuck up and die.” Kady gives Julia a wink, and they disappear to the underworld branch. It’s so quick - no one even says goodbye.

The bathroom echoes and amplifies every little sound, the rustle of clothing and shuffle of shoes. It sets Quentin’s teeth on edge, so he checks every stall - they’re miraculously alone. 

He takes a deep breath. “You ready, Jules?” 

“Yep,” she says, popping the ‘p’ sound with a false show of confidence. “I’ll go after Alice as soon as you guys create a distraction.”

“Oh, we’ll distract them alright,” Margo says. She’s filled her pockets with grenades and tucked a switchblade into her bra. Her bag of weaponry is slung across her chest and there’s a manic glint in her fairy eye.

Eliot’s still got that cigarette between his lips, so Quentin lights it with three short flicks of his fingers. 

It’s the same spell they’re going to use to set the library on fire. 

Eliot’s mouth quirks into a half-smile at the gesture and he takes a long drag, blowing the smoke at the ceiling. 

So Quentin shapes it into an enormous dick, because he knows it will make Eliot laugh.  

And he does, hauling Quentin in against him and kissing him so hard that Quentin’s exhaling smoke when they finally part. “You know I love you, right?” Eliot says, his eyes suspiciously shiny.

Quentin doesn’t even have to answer.

“If you two are done being nauseatingly adorable,” Margo says, readying the flamethrower, her lacquered nails a bright red against the black trigger, “let’s go fuck some shit up.” 

And she kicks down the bathroom door. 

* * *

Margo, of course, charges straight down the middle of the library with a battle cry and a steady stream of flame. Eliot and Quentin slip down the side aisles, firing off spells so rapidly that their fingertips are essentially on fire. 

Apparently Kady was right about the element of surprise - there are no sirens, no librarians waiting to stop them. 

Quentin can see Eliot across the room for the first ten stacks or so, the fire casting his features into stark, shadowed relief, with orange light dancing across his dark curls and reflecting in his eyes.

And then the fire grows too big, consumes too much of the space and air between them, and Eliot is nothing more than distant movement, the mere idea of a person. 

The smoke is thick, rolling black, and Quentin never knew that fire could be so goddamned _loud_. It’s all he can hear, roaring and snapping and cracking around him. He charmed himself to be impervious to the flames but the heat is still oppressive, tactile, a wall he has to push against and through. He keeps going for what feels like ages, until the fire feels like it’s a part of him, burning in his bones.

He can’t see Margo at all any more.

Quentin stops for a moment and squints, searching to find Eliot’s tall, slim shape gliding along the far end of the aisle. 

It’s a fucking miracle that he sees the librarian travel into the flames behind Eliot.

He just appears, in the space between breaths, with a fire ax in his hands, and he’s hoisting it overhead and aiming at Eliot’s neck like it’s firewood ready to be split. Quentin startles when he recognizes him - it’s the same librarian that came for Penny’s body.

“Eliot!” He screams, not taking the time to wait and see if Eliot can hear him, not feeling the panic choking in his throat, not doing anything except twisting his flaming fingers into a spell he never thought he’d use.

Because Quentin doesn’t have to kill him. There are spells to incapacitate him, knock him out, freeze him in place. He has a myriad of options.

But it’s Eliot and it’s the library, and they’re the reason he forgot about magic and his friends, why he lost so much time as Brian and the reason Eliot had to deal with the trauma of being fucking _possessed_  -

-and Quentin’s fingers are shaping the lethal battle magic before he thinks any farther.  

Eliot looks up, confused at first. Quentin’s hands are so strong and beautiful and still _on fire_  as they work through the spell, but Eliot isn’t sure who it’s aimed at.

Because he never even saw the librarian with the ax aimed at his neck - at least, not until Quentin’s spell slices the man in half from the top of the left shoulder clear across to his right hip. 

There’s blood but not much - maybe the fire in Quentin’s hands cauterized the cut or something - and then the two chunks of the body fall to the floor with meaty thuds. 

Small flames lick against the corpse and it begins to sizzle. 

Eliot and Quentin just stare at each other for half a moment before Quentin starts sprinting through the fire to get to Eliot. And Eliot is freaking the fuck out, because he remembers what it did to him when he was forced to kill Mike, and he’s always believed that he’s so much more calloused than Quentin. 

Because Quentin is tenderness personified, an exposed nerve, an open wound - he’s raw and overwhelmed by life even on its best days. This… something like this could destroy him.

And Eliot can’t take it. They can’t have survived everything they’ve been through for him to lose Quentin this way. He wraps his enormous hands around Quentin’s narrow shoulders, bends down to look him directly in the eyes. 

And all he sees is clarity and conviction. 

“Told you,” Quentin says, voice steady and solid. “I’m not watching you die again.” 

So often, Quentin speaks softly and haltingly and he can barely meet anyone’s eyes - and Eliot _loves_  him. At the very core of him, to a painful degree, Eliot loves Quentin. He wants to wrap him in a soft blanket and carry him away to some place where the world isn’t constantly trying to crush him, where it doesn’t scrape against Quentin every time he moves. 

But looking at him now, seeing how strong he’s had to become just to make it through this life that feels so uncomfortable for him, Eliot’s no longer so sure he has to be so protective. 

Quentin can handle himself.

A siren finally begins screaming somewhere far off, emergency lights strobing above them. 

But Quentin just wraps his arms around Eliot’s chest and squeezes. “It was him or you, El. He’d made his choice - he was going to kill you. So I made mine. And I’m okay.” Quentin lifts his face and kisses him, hard and fast, the fire a tornado of red and orange and yellow surrounding them, battling against their protective barriers. “I promise.”

And Eliot believes him. He nods.

Quentin squares his shoulders. “Now let’s finish this thing.”

* * *

Julia closes her eyes under the harsh, humming bathroom light, and exhales. 

“Alice,” she murmurs. She expects to feel a sense of her, to know where she is and what she’s doing. Like Julia can feel that Kady just found her Penny, _their_  Penny, and is so relieved that she’s sobbing. And she knows that Margo has successfully reduced an entire wing to a pile of broken kindling and lit the whole fucking thing into a raging bonfire. 

But Julia doesn’t get a sense of Alice. Instead, she opens her eyes and finds that she’s traveled straight to her, somehow. 

She’s never going to get used to this whole goddess thing. 

She’s in a tiny cell and Alice is seated right in front of her. But Alice isn’t Alice, not exactly. She looks older and too thin, hunched over a desk and scribbling furiously. The floor around her is littered with thousands of sheets of crumpled paper covered in her careful, tiny writing. 

“Alice? Hey, we, uh, we came to get you out of here. Everyone did - well, mostly everyone, Josh and Fen are running Fillory, weirdly enough - and we have to get going.”

Alice just keeps writing. Julia tries to pry the pencil from her fingers and finds that she can’t, that it’s somehow _fused_  with Alice’s hand. 

There’s no way Alice could work a spell with that thing attached to her. There’s no way she could ever do anything except what she’s doing - writing.

“Jesus,” Julia breathes. “What happened?”

“I double-crossed the library.” 

Alice’s voice is rough and creaky, like rusted machinery being forced back into life. Julia wonders just how long it’s been for her, here, in the library outside of time. And how long it’s been since she’s seen another human. “They tortured me until I signed their stupid contract. And then they sent me down here. I have to record...everything. Just write it down. No power to stop it, infinite power to witness it.” 

She laughs, or at least that’s what Julia thinks that sound is supposed to be. It’s actually more similar to a wounded animal’s cry, tinged with hysteria. “I think it’s driving me a little mad.”

Julia tentatively reaches out, resting her fingers on the back of Alice’s free hand. “Okay. We’re going to fix all of that, and we’re getting you out of here. All we have to do is wait for the others to destroy your contract, and you’re free. And I can heal your hand. So just hang on, okay?”

“I have to write,” is all Alice says, the pencil clenched so tightly that her knobby knuckles are bleached a milky white. 

“Hurry, Q,” Julia murmurs. 

* * *

Penny 23 is supremely uncomfortable. 

He’s been watching another version of himself make out with Kady for, like, four minutes now, and it feels both way too personal and somehow still detached, like jerking himself off with his left hand in a motel bathroom. 

He’d like nothing more than to get the fuck out of here - this room, the underworld, the entire damn galaxy that houses this godforsaken library - but he can’t. He’s not going to leave Kady behind, and she won’t go without Penny 40, and he can’t leave until his contract burns. 

Kady, though - watching her get to her Penny had been awe-inspiring. And more than a little terrifying. His timeline had been an apocalyptic hellscape, and he still hadn’t ever seen fighting like that. She performs battle magic as easily as breathing, and doesn’t even hesitate to watch the bodies fall. 

What he still doesn’t understand is how any kind of physical assault worked, since they’re in the underworld. How do you kill dead bodies? But somehow Kady had known, and she’d taken full advantage of it. 

So she was spattered with blood, her dark hair a crazy cloud around her flushed face, and she had holes burned in her shirt when she’d finally rounded a corner and spotted her Penny.

And everything else in the universe ceased to matter. 

Penny 23 isn’t sure he’d ever seen her smile, really _smile_ , before that moment. It was powerful, and beautiful, and made him feel something that was more than a little confusing.

Before they’d left the cottage, Kady had pulled him aside and forced herself to look at him. “Thank you,” she’d said, as if the words were something bitter that she was choking on. “For helping me get him back. You’re risking yourself and you don’t have to - but then, that’s something my Penny did all the time.” 

She’d bitten her lip and looked at him like he was something special - valuable, even - and _Jesus_  it had been so long since a woman treated him like that. It prodded at something dormant and buried deep inside him, something black and so still that he’d thought it died with Julia. 

_Oh, shit_ , he’d thought.  _Kady’s a gorgeous, brilliant, terrifying warrior. And she’s in love with someone who’s just like me._

The thought displaced a tiny shard of the ache over the loss of Julia, which made him feel guilty and a little horny at the same time. 

But before he could wrap his head around any of it, they were at war. And now Kady’s back in her Penny’s arms. 

Actually, she’s biting his lip and gasping for breath and curling her fingers into his hair.

Penny 40 groans and grabs Kady’s ass, hauling her into his lap. 

Penny 23 rubs his temples and begins to wish he’d stayed in his original timeline. 


	3. Chapter 3

Margo stomps through the flames. She’d run into a librarian a few minutes back and he got in a lucky punch, so she’s got a split lip and blood smeared across her teeth. 

But she subsequently turned him into a human tiki torch, so she figures she came out ahead in the end. (Those cheap suits they wear go up like dry grassland.) 

The flamethrower has run out of fuel, so she pulls a grenade pin with her teeth, tosses it, and stalks away. The floor shakes with the force of the explosion but her hands are already working through a series of destructive spells. 

She hadn’t wanted to rely on magic for this assault - it’s been too spotty lately, and if the library figures out what they’re doing, they can turn it off entirely. But magic is working for right now, so Margo does everything she can. She pulls nails from the rafters and removes screws from the bookshelves. She bursts pipes in the walls and wrenches the doors from their frames. 

And when everything is broken and burning and the whole world seems to have gone to hell seventeen times over, she finally focuses her attention on the small office at the center of the library. It’s tucked behind the circulation desk, guarded by the Head Librarian, and it’s where they keep employment contracts and control the siphon.

At that moment, Eliot and Quentin emerge from the smoke billowing behind her.

Margo turns to them, her bloody mouth grinning. “You boys are just in time for the real fun.”

She throws two more grenades and the desk explodes, flaming splinters raining down around them. The librarian just stands there, her hands held up and out at her sides in a strange way that reminds Margo of Anne Hathaway’s White Queen in the Alice in Wonderland movie.

Margo hates Anne Hathaway.

“It’s Zelda, right?” She asks, kicking aside a stack of magical request forms that are beginning to smoke. “Listen up, Zelda. You’re going to open that door and you’re not going to put up a fight, or I’m going to tear your arms off and beat you to death with them. Got it?”

Eliot doesn’t give Zelda a chance to reply. Her finger twitches - maybe a nervous habit, maybe the beginning of a spell - and he freezes her, using a variation on the spell the Beast used on Quentin’s class.

Eliot sighs. Confronting the Head Librarian was always going to be the hardest part. He remembers - barely, in that blurry way alcohol affects memory - meeting her on that first trip to the Neitherlands in what feels like half a dozen lifetimes ago. She was uptight and nerdy - two of Eliot’s favorite qualities in a person - and fiercely devoted to protecting the treasures the library housed. But time and blind devotion and rigid adherence to arbitrary rules carved away at her until all that remained was... this. This shell of a woman who was willing to kill and maim and starve a universe of worlds in order to defend what she believed was right. 

He knows that none of them really want to kill her. And all of them know they won’t have a choice. 

Because if they let her live, this was all for nothing. She can rebuild the library. She can continue to control the siphon. They’ll never be free.

He and Margo share a look while Quentin lifts the key from around Zelda’s neck and unlocks the central room. 

“What’s the plan here?” Eliot asks her quietly.

“Who knows?” Margo murmurs. “Go help Q; I can keep an eye on the poster child for anal retention over here.”

Eliot looks conflicted; she squeezes his hand. “It’s going to be okay, El. I swear. We’ll figure something out. For now, just go burn those contracts.”

It’s Margo; there’s no question of whether he trusts her. He follows Quentin into the office.

Where there is, of course, a complicated organizational structure adhered to with strict exactitude. But it works in their favor - even with the rows and rows of filing cabinets, they’ve located and torched Penny and Alice’s within a minute.

One second later, Julia and Alice pop directly into the room.

“Wait, what?” Quentin asks, looking around. “Where’s Penny? How did you travel-“

“Apparently it’s a thing I can do now,” Julia answers with a shrug. “I’m as confused by all this as you are. But, you know what they say about gift horses and mouths…”

“Right.” Quentin smiles, small and quick, in awe of Julia as always.

And then he looks at Alice, squinting and cocking his head. Her hair is shaggy and her cheeks are hollowed out, her dress ragged and hanging on her starved-looking frame. But there’s some fresh color in her face and she’s staring at her right hand with wonder, flexing her fingers and swirling them through the air experimentally, like she’s tripping on one of Josh’s mushroom teas.

He has so many questions, but now’s not the time. She and Julia look relatively happy and healthy, and it’s more than he could have hoped for when they left the cottage half an hour ago. 

Margo comes in, dragging Zelda's frozen form by the bony ankles. “Enough with the cutesy reunions, people, time’s ticking.”

“Okay, so we just have to destroy all the rest of this,” Quentin says, gesturing at the vast storage room. 

“Actually, we can help with that,” Kady says, traveling in with both Pennys. “We made a stop on our way back. I saw this in the artifact room last time - pretty sure it’s the magical equivalent of a nuke.”

She’s holding a silver tube the size of three wine bottles stacked end to end, with a thick wire running lengthwise up the middle and an enormous, shiny red knob on the top. 

“Holy shit,” Quentin breathes. 

“That is disturbingly phallic,” Eliot says.

“Dibs on pushing the button,” Margo says, rubbing her hands together with glee. 

“Not a chance,” Penny 40 replies. “This place literally killed and enslaved me. I get to be the one to take it down.”

Margo, to her credit, simply inclines her head. “Fair enough.”

Quentin looks around them, frowning. “This was too easy, right? It really shouldn’t have gone this well.”

“They got cocky. They had all the power, and they were fat and lazy,” Penny 23 says.

“Still, though. We don’t have this kind of luck.”

“Maybe we do now. Maybe we’ve gotten all the shitty luck out of the way,” Julia says.

And then a dozen librarians travel in, magic sparking from their fingertips. 

“...or not.” 

The whole team goes apeshit with spells.

The air is suddenly thick with flashing light and shouts in half a dozen ancient languages as they fire off a myriad of magic, quickly incapacitating every librarian. Penny 23 takes a slice to the ribs when he leaps in front of a spell to protect Kady, but it's just a shallow flesh wound. 

And just like that, the quick battle is over. Because there's only one librarian still standing, and he's hardly a threat.

His head, inexplicably, has been turned into a beet. 

“Okay, who went with the vegetarian option?” 

“Shit,” Alice mutters. The body is still stumbling around and grabbing at its bulbous, purple head.

“Creative,” Eliot says. “It may not be the most effective choice, but points for style.” 

“I don’t know what happened. It wasn’t even a proper spell, I was just thinking ‘beat him’ and then-“ she gestures, angrily. 

“Well, I mean, it worked. He’s not hurting anybody like that.” 

“But I don’t screw up spells. I _never_  screw up spells.”

“It’s a brave new world, sweetheart,” Margo drawls. “One where you fuck shit up. And we have to deal with twice the Penny. Hell, Q just straight up bisected a dude back there. Shit’s weird now.” 

Alice takes a deep breath. “Let me try again.” She frowns and concentrates, her fingers moving stiffly in a pattern that none of the other magicians recognize. 

And now the librarian has broccoli florets for arms. 

Alice laughs a little, maniacally. “I was thinking of salad this time; I couldn’t help it.”  

Kady laces her fingers together and gestures, throwing the vegetable librarian against a wall and knocking him unconscious. “This is getting ridiculous,” she says.

“This has been ridiculous for years now,” Eliot says. “Where have you been?”

“Can we please focus before something terrible happens? Is everyone else out of the library who needs to be?” Julia asks.

“They will be,” Penny 40 says. “We rigged the bomb with a secondary spell. As soon as their contracts are destroyed, they’ll be sent back to wherever they came from before the library took them.” 

Which leaves only one unsolved problem.

One by one, they look over at Zelda. 

Eliot’s freezing spell has begun to wear off, but Margo’s got a knife resting on her neck, the blade breaking the skin just enough for a thin line of blood to trail down her pale skin. 

“That doesn’t include you,” Penny 40 says, stepping closer to Zelda. “You voluntarily did every evil thing that happened here. So the spell won’t save you.”

The group looks around at each other, wondering just how far they’re willing to go. 

What they’re willing to lose. 

Because killing Zelda feels like a step beyond anything they’ve done so far. She hasn’t tried to kill them. She isn’t putting up a fight now. She’s just a frail woman who’s made some terrible decisions.

“We could take her back with us,” Julia finally says. “Lock her up at Brakebills until we can figure out what to do with her.”

Penny 40 sighs. “Yeah, okay. I’m alright with her wearing the shackles for a little bit. See how she likes it.”

His vote seems to be the deciding one. 

They all crowd closer together, linking hands to form a long chain. Margo is on the far end, keeping the knifepoint dug into Zelda’s neck with her free hand. 

“Okay, everybody ready?” Penny 40 asks. They don’t know how long they’ll have after they activate the bomb, but no one is willing to risk sticking around and finding out. 

They nod. Kady squeezes his hand, and Penny 40 pushes the button.

The bomb starts to vibrate and emits a high pitched whine, followed by a burst of painful, pure light. Quentin turns his face to Eliot’s chest; Alice gapes at the bomb, openmouthed. 

And Zelda screams and breaks free, running straight into the blooming destruction.

The last things they see before they travel out are the ends of her blonde curls catching fire, and her glasses falling warped and cracked at Kady’s feet. 


	4. Chapter 4

They collapse back on the floor of the cottage, a sweaty, sooty mass of tangled limbs. Quentin is coughing and Eliot’s rubbing small circles across his back, his dark curls wild across his forehead. Kady is uncomfortably sprawled across both Pennys, who are staring at each other, wary and confused. Alice’s glasses are crooked and her tights are more holes than fabric. 

Margo, of course, still looks amazing. 

Dazed, no one moves. 

They breathe, and slap at the smoldering embers in their clothes, and try to forget everything they just saw.

But eventually, Alice’s shoulders begin to shake in silent laughter. Maybe she really has gone crazy, because she can’t hold it in and starts howling hysterically, swiping at tears running down her face. 

It’s a strange emotional reaction, but a contagious one. After just a moment, the others join in. 

“We actually did it. We actually destroyed the library,” Julia manages to say, a brilliant smile lighting up her face. 

“Fuck yes, we did,” Kady and Penny 40 say together, their fingers entwined. “I can’t believe I’m actually back here,” he murmurs, playing with the ends of her curls with wonder.

Penny 23 looks away. 

“I can’t believe I’m going to have to put up with two of you now,” Quentin says. 

Both Pennys flip him off.  

Eliot looks up curiously and gestures toward the bar, his face lighting up when a bottle of gin lifts and floats to him. He flicks his fingers again and he’s got eight glasses, a bottle of vermouth, olives, ice, and a shaker surrounding him on the floor, magically making martinis for all of them. He sighs, happily, and lights a cigarette. 

“Finally. It’s been so long since that trick worked properly; I was beginning to feel a bit… impotent.” 

“Not something you have to worry about in my experience, El,” Quentin murmurs, taking the cigarette from his lips and taking a long drag. Eliot winks, and Quentin can’t help the blush that spreads across his soot-streaked cheeks.

Julia shakes her head. “Magic is freed, and of course your first thought is to use it to make a drink.”

"I have my priorities in order,” Eliot replies, floating a drink to Margo. She wraps her still-perfectly-manicured fingers around it and blows him a kiss.

Quentin leans toward Alice. “You okay?”

“I think I will be.” She carefully tries a simple spell to magically clean her clothes, and sighs with relief when it works properly. “I’ve been so messed up for so long, that I think I’ve forgotten how to just… be a person. But now I’ve got a chance to work on that.” She tucks her hair behind her ears. “Thanks for coming to rescue me.”

“You’re a part of me, Alice. A part of all of us. We’re always going to come for you,” Quentin says.

“We save each other,” Julia adds, simply.

“We’re like pansexual ninja turtles,” Margo adds.

Alice takes a deep breath and looks around the cottage like she’s seeing it all for the first time. “So, what do we do now?” 

They stare at one another. Kady and Penny 40 are eye-fucking so hard it’s practically pornographic, and Penny 23 is gulping the drink Eliot handed him. 

Julia’s skin is glowing, faintly, like she has a tiny sun inside of her. 

Margo is sipping her drink and considering the Fillory clock, already dreaming of her crown and throne. 

And Quentin is thinking of the thousands of tiny moments from his alternate life with Eliot - the way El’s hands feel when they comb the tangles from his hair, the smell of his skin at the end of a long day, the wrinkle that forms between his brows when they’re arguing, and the sound he makes just before he comes.

It’s all ahead of them. A whole life, with all of them, together. They have so much time. 

Quentin’s face splits into an enormous grin. 

“Anything we want.”


End file.
